Marriage and Family Therapy Internships

Our Marriage and Family Therapy interns are chosen for their psychotherapy skills, experience and compassion. They offer sliding scale fees which allows us to offer lower fee psychotherapy to people who otherwise might not be able to afford it.

We have every confidence in their ability to work effectively with a wide variety of people. They have usually had several years of experience of working with clients and are in the process of working on and completing their clinical hours necessary for California state licensure.

We have employed Marriage and Family Therapy private practice interns in our practices since 1994. We love doing psychotherapy and value the ongoing personal and professional development that flows from it. We also grow personally and professionally from the enjoyable and stimulating process of mentoring and training new therapists. Frances has 30 years of supervision experience. Michael has been supervising for the past fifteen years.

When we were starting out as young MFT interns, we learned our craft from highly skilled and knowledgeable elders and mentors. It is a privilege for us to be able to offer the same professional support and teaching to young therapists starting their careers in this wonderful and difficult career.

We are always looking for interns who share our psychotherapy approaches and are interested in working with us. Please see our Internship section.

Marriage and Family Therapy internships

We look for MFT interns who share our psychotherapeutic approaches and are interested in interning with one of us in a private practice setting. If so, please email us a letter of interest and your resume.

We look for competent mature people who:

are interested in and already have some training in Gestalt and somatic psychotherapy, trauma work, Attachment theory, Attachment focused couples and family therapy, Character Structure, play therapy and Expressive arts

are in their late 20s or older with previous successful life or work experience

can bring a minimum of 8 -10 clients

have a proven record of attracting and keeping clients

have excellent references

have effective communication and interpersonal skills, and can present themselves in a professional way

have good social skills, are comfortable at reaching out, networking and building a referral base

are dedicated to their own personal therapeutic development, which is crucial to the ability to effectively help others.

are eager to build a repertoire of skills with a variety of clients – adults, children, teenagers, couples, families, groups — that will ensure a wide referral base

are willing to ask for help and guidance, and able to accept honest feedback

are a good match for the skills, mentorship and perspectives that we have to offer.

When you are the intern

Look for an employer who:

you like as a person – FIT is the most important variable

is flexible, reasonable, has good boundaries

has good teaching and mentoring skills

has the professional and clinical expertise that you want to learn

is well recommended by your peers/ fellow interns

has enough experience in private practice to teach you marketing, networking and the practicalities of running your own small business.

Office space
We usually have two interns each, although we have space for more.
The Noe Valley suite has a small, well furnished intern office, which includes a sand tray, and sand tray objects. A larger office, which also has a sand tray, is available for evening clients. Our downtown office is larger with enough space for couples and families.

Best practices
We are legally obligated to employ interns. Our expenses include Federal and State employment taxes, unemployment and disability contributions, office expenses and accounting costs. Salary is determined on this basis.

We are required by the BBS to provide an hour of supervision for every ten hours of face-to-face clinical work. If you have more than ten clients we do our best to find you an adjunct supervision group or provide one ourselves.

We also teach you the nuts and bolts of practice management from using appropriate paperwork, to taking notes, managing your boundaries, keeping confidentiality, and dealing with insurance companies.

Marketing.
Like it or not, private practice is a small business and marketing is an awkward word for becoming better known to our friends and colleagues in the therapeutic community. We find that colleagues and former clients are generally the main source of referrals. You can often make valuable person-to-person contact with colleagues by participating in trainings or supervision groups.

When you join our practice, we will introduce you to our colleagues on all our listservs. We will of course include you on our website, http://sfpsych.com, with photos and your description of your work.

We strongly recommend that you:

join the Psychology Today website

expand your own Facebook page

develop your own website and your own email contact lists

join CAMFT and the local SF CAMFT chapter, and

participate in as many local list serves as possible.

We encourage you to become a student member of CAMFT, which is a great resource for legal questions. We also suggest that you become a member of the local chapter, SFCAMFT. SFCAMFT has a support group for interns and its list serve is invaluable for getting known in the community.

We fund marketing endeavors such as fliers which can actually drive traffic to our/your website. We use Thumbtack Bugle, a business that puts up fliers all over San Francisco, especially in coffee shops and laundromats. They are usually good sources of lower-fee clients for interns.